Russian hacker may have cracked DRM piracy protections on Rise of the Tomb Raider

A video has emerged that appears to show a successful crack of the Square Enix title on PC.

DRM – or Digital Rights Management – is used in major AAA game to curb piracyScreenshot/Yandex

Denuvo's DRM technology is routinely used to protect popular PC games from online piracy by preventing illegal downloads from working – yet the strength of the tool has been brought into question after a video emerged that appeared to show a successfully cracked version of Square Enix's adventure game Rise of the Tomb Raider.

DRM – or Digital Rights Management – is used in major AAA game titles including Metal Gear Solid 5, Hitman and Star Wars: Battlefront to halt unwanted piracy, and as a result has long-plagued those who use illegally torrented versions of games instead of legitimate purchases.

Like many other major releases the latest iteration of the popular Tomb Raider franchise was thought to be protected by DRM, however, as reported by PCGamesN, the video showing a successful debug process and load has led to theories the anti-tampering tool may have been circumvented.

Evidence in the video suggests the infamous Reloaded group of crackers are involved in the scheme as the video shows the group's logo at one stage. However, some critics believe the incident is an elaborate hoax. Indeed, at the time of writing, no files have appeared online to check if the crack is legitimate.

When contacted, Thomas Goebl, a director at Denuvo, said: "It's always hard to comment on something which is not available to the public, all files currently floating around are fake. The general positioning of our product is 'hard to crack' and not 'uncrackable'. For us it is important to secure the initial sales window of games, which worked out well on all the recent titles."

Thanks to its ability to curb piracy, entire subreddit's have formed around the topic of cracking DRM-enhanced titles. One, called r/Crackstatus, lists progress of those attempting to break the protections on games such as Far Cry Primal, DOOM and Mirror's Edge Catalyst. The page still lists Rise of the Tomb Raider as 'not cracked' and this is unlikely to change until solid proof of the reported DRM-breaking method is revealed.